Wither and Wonder
by nb41
Summary: Before they decide if they want to give this whole Seer and Champion thing a go, Jane has about one thousand questions for Thor. (Jane/Thor, Ghost Hunter AU)


This is a direct sequel to _There is No Lesson in Magic_ and _Untimely Dreams_ and will make a lot more sense if you read those first.

Based on allofthefeelings-at-tumblr's Ghost Hunting AU. Partly inspired by Robin McKinley's Sunshine. This is a ghosts/supernatural/magical world sort of AU-fusion thing. I made some timeline alterations to _Untimely Dreams_ to mesh with this, because I didn't like how I had set things up. Specifically, I shortened how long Thor's been around.

* * *

Despite that Jane wasn't the least bit injured, the hospital wouldn't release her until the following morning. Erik related that the SHIELD Council's doctors 'just wanted to keep her for observation', since a run-in with a ghast of that level could have long-term psychic effects which were difficult to detect in the short term. This seemed like a reasonable excuse, though Darcy wasn't swayed by it. She thought it was something to do with Thor, or more specifically their very high test score.

"Why should that matter?" Erik asked, scowling. As much as Jane agreed with his sentiment and loved him like a second dad, she was hoping Agatha would show up to drag him back to the lab real soon.

Rolling her eyes, Darcy said, "Come on, you saw how they were all _over_ him when they got on scene."

Jane regretted having been unconscious for that; according to Darcy, High Councilor Fury and Councilor Coulson descending on the ghast and finishing it off had been quite a sight.

"Yeah but they're all over anyone after a containment failure," she said. Erik nodded.

"And naturally they're concerned about him—he's clearly a powerful Champion who possesses an Artifact of considerable heft, and he was injured, by a Level 3-f ghast, no less. The same ghast Jane was exposed to. And let's not forget the wailer! It's a serious situation."

"Whatever, I'm just saying it sounds fishy," Darcy said. Erik huffed in annoyance, and seemed ready to press the argument further, but to Jane's relief Agatha arrived just then to collect him. Darcy left shortly afterward, and so Jane was able to spend the evening in relative peace with her laptop.

When they let her out the next morning, the first thing Jane wanted to do was go check on Thor. Given the seriousness of his injury, she figured he had a minimum of another day ahead of him (if not longer), and with the upcoming eclipse she couldn't afford to stay with him. She had far too much work to do. Letting him know how to get in touch with her seemed like a reasonable solution in the meantime, plus, maybe they could spare a few minutes and ask him just one or two more questions. Darcy was absolutely okay with this plan since she was curious about him and still convinced something was up with the Council's behavior.

Except when they arrived at his room, it was being cleaned up by a cluster of nurses, and he was gone.

Jane swallowed against a wave of panic. "Wh—where is he?" One of the nurses paused in the midst of unhooking some equipment.

"Are you family?"

Jane was about to say, 'no' when Darcy gave her a sideways glance and said, "She's his Seer."

Jane's mouth snapped shut. The nurse blinked and pulled out a tablet, brow furrowing as he swept over the display. "They didn't mark down a Seer on his chart—"

As smoothly as if she was sweet-talking Erik into something and not potentially violating health care privacy, Darcy said, "They haven't done their trial yet. Just preliminary training."

Jane tensed. Not everyone considered 'in training' to be enough to qualify a Seer and Champion as relations when it came to private matters like health care. She sure hoped Darcy knew what she was doing, or at least had a good idea of what the hospital's policy was, because Jane sure didn't.

Apparently Darcy _was_ familiar with the policy (or had guessed right), because the nurse stopped scanning at Thor's chart. "Oh. Well, the Council wanted to talk to him before he was discharged, so they came and took him off for a chat."

Frowning, Jane said, "Isn't his arm still healing?"

The nurse shook his head. "It was good as new when we took the bandage off today."

Jane had seen ghast injuries before. They took weeks to heal, not days. Unless that had been an experimental miracle salve of some kind—

"Thanks, we'll go track him down," Darcy said, and turned to go, grabbing Jane by the arm. Jane was still puzzling over this new information and so went without complaint.

Once they were a little ways down the hall, Darcy said, "Told you something was up." Jane barely registered it, though, as she was more concerned about Thor's injuries, or more specifically, their sudden absence.

Jane said, "I've seen ghast injuries before. We both have."

"Yep," Darcy said.

"They can take almost a _month_ to heal, even the ones from little ghasts."

"I think you should know that from a Champion's perspective, _no_ ghast qualifies as little."

"Fine—weaker. And that one was much more powerful than anything I've ever felt before. He's lucky he didn't lose his arm."

Darcy shrugged. "Maybe that Artifact can heal him. Maybe someone tried an experimental something on him like they did Steve Rogers. Maybe he has some kind of regenerative magic. Who knows."

"Yeah," Jane said, though she continued to turn the memory of the ghast engulfing his arm over in her mind, worrying at it like a loose thread. Elemental magic tended to be somewhat exclusive in those who could wield it; they were seldom skilled in other magic, like healing or spirit work. So maybe it _had_ been an experimental salve the SHIELD Council was working on—if Darcy's guess over their interest in him was right, it would make sense they'd be willing to break out one of their special projects for his sake.

They exited the hospital and were greeted by a blustery autumn mid-morning. Clouds scurried overhead, varying from white and fat to dark blue gray and ragged and casting broad swaths of chilly shadow as they went. The bright gold leaves of the aspen trees that dotted this end of the campus trembled and sighed in the wind. It was hard for Jane to associate this bright, crisp day with the numbing terror of two nights ago.

Darcy turned to face her. "So, are we going to sit outside the Council chamber all day waiting for them to cut him loose, or are we going to your place so you can clean up before we head back to the observatory?"

Jane sagged. She was now over a day behind on calculations that she'd wanted to wrap up before the eclipse, so arguably the later was the right decision. Yet she also had so many questions for Thor. Where was he from? What was his Artifact, exactly? How did elemental magic work? (She'd never had a chance to talk one on one with an elementalist; they weren't exactly thick on the ground, even in this Ward, the third largest in North America.) And maybe above all else, why was he unpaired, just like she was, at his age and with his skillset?

But she couldn't get those answers until the Council was done with him, and she wouldn't be able to do her work just sitting there staring at the chamber entrance.

Maybe seeing her indecision, Darcy added, "Don't worry, I'll try to figure out how you can contact him as soon as he's contactable."

Well, that would be something, at least. "Let's go back to the lab," Jane said, and told herself it wasn't defeat. "After a shower and some coffee."

"Sounds like a plan." Darcy checked her belt, going over its contents. She had a new dagger, Jane noticed; Council issued, by the strength of the runes shining on its orange-colored, glass blade. And was that a new model of Taser?

Darcy caught her looking. "Tony Stark himself showed up to hand this over," she said. "And all I had to do was give him a full report on the other one."

"Wow. What was he like?"

"Talkative, brilliant, and completely full of himself."

Jane snorted. Darcy said, "Hey, I just tell it like it is." Apparently satisfied with her weaponry, she nodded at the path which lead to the west tunnel entrance. "Onward."

* * *

It turned out Darcy didn't need to try to contact Thor, because he showed up at the observatory about two hours after Jane and Darcy arrived, around mid-afternoon. They were down on the lower level at their desks, going over the output from the latest round of tests, while Erik was up on the ground floor discussing the upcoming eclipse with a cluster of grad students.

The first indication they had of Thor's entrance was Erik saying, "Goodness! How does a man your size move so quietly."

Jane looked up to see Thor standing back a few feet from a the now wide-eyed graduate students and a startled Erik. Thor put his hands behind his back and dipped his head.

"My apologies, Professor. I didn't wish to interrupt you."

Erik smoothed his hands down his sweater. The motion put Jane in mind of a flustered owl. "Yes, well." He huffed and leaned out over the upper-level railing to peer down among the workstations, bookshelves, and desks littering the lower floor, where the associate professors and their assistants rubbed elbows with post-docs and graduate students. "Jane, I believe you have a visitor."

Jane felt her ears grow warm as dozens of other astrophysicists and astronomers peeked over and around their monitors at her. She got up and tried to avoid everyone's eyes. "Be right there," she called up, and gestured for Darcy to come with her. The climb up the staircase felt like being on display with how almost everyone had paused to watch.

Thor made no move to approach them once they were upstairs, and Jane found herself reluctant to do so. Now that he was standing before her, dressed in his own clothes (a colorblock shirt in Champion's dark gray and red; plain, black jeans; and a dark brown, shearling jacket folded over one arm) and with that Artifact hanging from his belt along his right leg, she found it hard to know how to go about interacting with him.

Darcy, on the other hand, was nowhere near as reserved. She walked right up to Thor and offered her hand. He hesitated, glancing at Jane—she wondered if this was a Champion thing—then focused on Darcy again and shook hands with her, nodding his head in a silent greeting.

The moment the handshake was done, Darcy took hold of his wrist, turned his arm over, and shoved up the sleeve of his shirt. Jane would have expected Thor to react with surprise or pull back, but he didn't; his expression was entirely calm. That was when Jane realized Darcy had exposed his injured arm, or, what had _been_ his injured arm. As the nurse had said, the skin was entirely healed, and bore no indication of the injury he'd sustained the day before.

"Holy cow, what did they use on you?" Darcy said, poking at his forearm experimentally. Jane was mortified and on the verge of offering the most profuse apology she could think of when Erik moved to stand next to Darcy, also staring in open amazement.

"There's an incredibly skilled biomancer who's working on technology that can heal injuries this well," Erik said, and glanced up Thor with his eyebrows raised. Thor shook his head.

"No, that is not how my arm was healed. But I too have heard of her work. Helen Cho is her name, yes?"

He knew Helen. Or, he knew her name. That was enough to draw Jane forward. "Yeah. She's in Atlantic Shore Ward right now. We were roommates for a few years in college."

Once she was standing next to Darcy, Thor's eyes met hers. They stared at one another like that for several seconds, during which Darcy and Erik both felt quiet and move back a few steps.

Thor blinked and seemed to come back to himself. Tugging his shirt sleeve down, he said, "I have spoken with the SHIELD Council about the other night. They wish to discuss it with you as well, though since your work is important they are willing to delay until after the eclipse has passed."

Darcy gave Thor an incredulous look. "How did you pull _that_ off."

With a faint smile, he said, "I can be persuasive when I must."

"I bet," Darcy murmured. Erik cut a sharp look at her and pursed his lips.

Thor's eyes narrowed a fraction in amusement. He said to Jane, "I was wondering if you might be free to talk. There is a cafe which serves coffee and pastries close to here. I won't keep you long, but...there are things we should perhaps discuss."

Darcy widened her eyes at Jane in a 'don't you dare say no' look. Erik was fidgeting and shifting and generally failing at being nonchalant.

"Sure," Jane said. "Let me get my coat."

"I'll get it," Darcy said, and went down the stairs before Jane could respond. They stood there, awkwardly stealing glances at one another while the whole rest of the department pretended not to stare.

Thankfully Darcy was back in under a minute. She'd even brought Jane's hat and scarf. "You know about the tunnels, right?"

Thor nodded and pulled his jacket back on. "We will be sure to use them."

"Great. Because it's my ass if you don't."

With more formality than Jane would have expected, Thor said, "I will not dishonor your service."

Darcy glanced at the hammer, then said, "Okay." Thor turned towards the door, and Darcy flashed Jane a discreet thumb's up.

Erik looked like he badly wanted to say something but was keeping it in. Since his willpower was probably seconds from failing him, Jane quickly buttoned up her long wool coat and said, "We'll be back by sunset," and rushed to join Thor.

* * *

The 'cafe' in question was Barton's, and the 'pastries', it turned out, were donuts. (Barton's also served pastries, but it was the donuts Thor was interested in.) They settled on a bench in the courtyard where they'd met, in part because Jane wanted to convince herself she was going to be okay walking through it (she was), and in part because she wanted to see if there was anything to notice in the aftermath.

Despite the polite distance between them, Thor's physical warmth helped counteract the sharp, icy wind which soaked through Jane's coat and clothing with each sharp gust. Or perhaps he was turning the worst of it away from them; she couldn't sense elemental magic well enough to recognize someone performing it at low levels. The Artifact was an additional comfort, providing a gentle, steady pulse that was akin to being wrapped up in a spirit cocoon. With these things bolstering her, she felt good enough to stretch her senses into the courtyard and confirm everything was okay. She felt no lingering essence from either the ghast or the wailer—not that she'd expected to, Seer Phil Coulson was a consummate professional—and the Council had cleaned up the physical damage wrought by the lightning strike. Still, Jane thought she could still see the path it had taken through the sand as a faint, magical scar.

"These are interesting," Thor said, pulling her out of her meditation on their surroundings. He was inspecting a donut hole like it was something curious and new. "I should have tried them sooner."

Jane wrinkled her nose. "How long have you been here that these are the first donut holes you've ever had?"

"A little more than a season." His gaze flicked out over the courtyard. "I was reluctant, when I first arrived, to explore much."

She thought that over. Almost no one used a seasonal calendar anymore, though she knew they'd once been favored due to how magic interacted with natural light, solstices, and equinoxes. She decided to make a guess. "So are you...from Europe somewhere?"

Thor looked askance at her. "Is it so obvious?"

Jane flushed. "Sorry, it's just, your accent, and the runes on your Artifact, and I know at least a handful of the European Wards still go by seasonal calendars."

He sipped from his coffee and took to considering the cup. Enough time passed that Jane began to wonder why he was taking so long to respond, and dread curled inside her. What if he was on the run for some reason? What if he was carrying a curse—it would be just her luck that the best-matched Champion to come along in years would also be trailing bad magic—

"It is an...involved story," he said, and the sound of his voice paused the downward spiral of her thoughts. Fortunately he continued before her mind could construct a whole new series of potential disasters. "I am from Asgard."

For a moment Jane thought she'd misheard. "As—Asgard? Did you say Asgard?"

He nodded. He looked tense, somehow, and that convinced Jane she wasn't misunderstanding him. "I don't understand, how...how can you be from Asgard?"

She regretted it the second she'd said it, because not only did it sound like a ridiculous question, he might take it to mean she thought he was lying, or an anomaly. But he only smiled.

"In the same way many are from somewhere—it's where I was born and grew up," he said.

She flushed again, now because he sounded like he was teasing her. "Right, ah, that makes sense. You were born in Asgard, so you're Asgardian."

"Æsir," he said. Jane blinked.

"Oh. Okay." She tried to reconcile the fact that she was sitting next to an Asgardian ( _Æsir_ , she reminded herself) with her knowledge of Asgard. That knowledge was minimal, and most of it old, because Asgard had sealed itself away from the world under an impenetrable spacetime dome of immense power some two thousand years ago. Yet here Thor sat, sharing coffee and donut holes with her.

As an astrophysicist there was one prominent feature of the island country which Jane was especially interested in: the spacetime bridge the Æsir used to travel around the planet instantaneously. Other countries had advanced spacetime manipulation, particularly since the Event, but the Æsir had constructed their bridge long before anyone else, and it was still the most powerful of its kind. What must they be able to do _now_?

Still, despite how badly she wanted Thor to tell her everything he knew about Æsir physics immediately, it might be a good idea to get the mundane things out of the way first. Such as... "Why are you here, and not there? I mean, the dome—no one's seen an—Æsir—come out for who knows how long. Well, there haven't been any _confirmed_ sightings. Definitely not since the Event."

Thor made a face. "It's true, we've kept almost entirely to ourselves for over two millennia. For reasons which I do not entirely agree with myself." He turned his cup in his hands, and said, "The tale of my presence here is a long one, and it begins shortly before I was exiled."

It took Jane a moment to absorb that. Exile was a terrifying concept in light of the raw, unchecked nature of the Wilderness, particularly to a Seer. Apparitions of all shapes and sizes roamed freely outside the security of the Wards and protected roads, some of them harmless and even docile and some of them not. Warped magic leaked out of cracks, fissures, and breaches, twisting and corrupting things which came too close. Magical energy built up around gaps, forming turbulent accretion fields that rendered whole swaths of the land into blighted, unapproachable nightmarescapes. And people who delved in illegal magics moved among it all, beholden to nothing and no one but themselves and living by the skin of their teeth.

Jane shivered. It was theoretically possible, though difficult, to move in the Wilderness safely if one was powerful and resourceful enough. Tony Stark's incredible tale of survival was proof of that, and it wasn't the only of its kind. And realistically speaking, a Champion was the best equipped to survive exile, especially a powerful and probably well-trained elementalist like Thor. But casting someone out of a Ward was still a serious punishment. In fact, it was usually reserved for the severest crimes, like necromancy. Oh Dawn and Moonrise, what if it _was_ necromancy?

Just as quickly as she had the thought Jane dismissed it. The Council wouldn't have allowed a necromancer within the Ward, and anyways necromancers were almost always Seers. (Plus, would he have told her he'd been exiled if he _was_ a necromancer? Safer to steer clear of her all-together; prior use of blood magic would have shown up on the test.)

She took a steadying breath. Thor was waiting patiently, like he expected she might get up and leave right then and there. If she hadn't continued to feel buoyed and protected by the Artifact resting placidly by his side, she just might have.

"Why did they exile you?" she asked, and was glad that her voice didn't break or sound small.

Thor had been sitting rigid, his shoulders tense; now some of that bled away. "I made a grave error of diplomacy." He grimaced. "In truth, I nearly began a war."

Jane's feeling of being entirely out of her depth increased geometrically. "...oh. How did you...do that?"

And so he told her. Not all of it, and not every last detail, but what sounded like the pertinent points. About Asgard'a Vault being attacked by Jötnar, and how he'd taken matters into his own hands when Asgard's leadership hadn't responded in a matter he'd cared for. How he'd had words with Laufey and Fárbauti, the supreme leaders of Jötunheimr, and destroyed the fragile peace that had held between the neighboring, feuding islands for time out of mind. How Asgard was in no position to engage in another war with Jötunheimr, not in the aftermath of the Event (Thor didn't say why specifically), and sensing their weaker bargaining position, Laufey had insisted Thor be exiled before Jötunheimr would entertain any new peace treaty.

When he finished with this first portion of his story (Jane could sense the rest of it lurking iceberg-like behind his carefully schooled expression) she took a moment to nibble on a donut hole and think about what she wanted to ask. She wasn't, truth be told, sure how to feel about all of it. On the one hand, it wasn't blood magic. That was an intense relief. And attacking a Vault was a serious crime; Artifacts were one of humanity's only real defenses against the most dangerous and powerful apparitions roaming the planet, and they took a great deal of time, effort, and resources to produce. In many cultures they were sacred. On the other hand, it wasn't a good sign that Thor, an unbonded Champion, had responded to a threat on Asgard's Vault by stomping all over a delicate diplomatic relationship. She wondered what his status was (or rather what it had _been_ ) that he felt entitled to do so.

She supposed she could start by asking the most obvious question, and did. "So you can't ever go back?"

Again, he looked relieved she'd elected to stay and talk to him. "I'm—not certain. When first I was exiled I thought so. Now..." He sighed and shook his head. "Allow me to tell you the rest."

'The rest' was, in fact, even more to take in than she'd been expecting. The Jötnar who'd attacked the Vault, it turned out, hadn't been acting alone. Someone had let them in. As a distraction, Thor suspected, to interrupt a political announcement which had been imminent. (And now Jane _really_ wanted to know what his position had been in Asgard that political announcement were significant to him.) The person responsible had somewhat unexpectedly shown up to finish whatever the break-in had been intended to start, during the previous week's New Moon incursion.

Jane thought back to that night. She'd been locked up in the Vault, of course, as she always was, and so only knew what happened in passing from the Council's followup bulletins. This time they'd been sparse, though that wasn't uncommon, but the Wardens and Councilors who'd served that night had also been very hush-hush about specifics. Rumors had spread for days after the fact, bolstered by the low resolution footage taken with smartphones and recording baubles which was circulating on the network. In the end it was Darcy who'd given Jane the most complete version of events: an incredibly powerful, mechanical construct bound by blood magic had emerged from a spontaneous breach in the Border Zone, and a sudden tornado had wiped it out and sealed the breach.

"The tornado, during the New Moon. That was you?"

Thor nodded. "My...adversary, sought to finish me while I was weakened."

"Weakened?"

He reached down and tapped the handle of the Artifact. "When they cast me from Asgard, use of my magic was bound to my ability to wield Mjölnir, which I could not do until I proved myself worthy of its power."

Jane raised her eyebrows. "They tied use of your magic to a contract bound to the Artifact?" He made a sound of affirmation, and she said, "...because they wanted you to learn when to exercise power." He dipped his head once, eyes on the ground. "I'm guessing you fulfilled it, since you were able to use it to help Darcy and me."

He looked at her again. "I did. I am indebted to Melinda May and Andrew Garner for aiding me in this regard."

Wardens May and Garner, who had a team that maintained security in the Border Zone. It made sense they'd be the ones to run into him; no doubt he'd passed a month or more of quarantine in the warren-like temporary housing that filled the space between the Border Gateway and the first of the more permissive Zone wards.

Thor cleared his throat. "This is why I wished to speak with you. Before we consider anything further, you should have a full accounting of my past. My history is turbulent, and I am from a place which, despite its origins among humanity, has grown apart. There are a great many cultural differences between us and the rest of Earth. To say nothing of the things which I have done to find myself removed from my own people."

Absently, Jane said, "Yeah," more to assure him she was paying attention than anything else. She was trying to decide if this was worse, or better, than a curse. Or if it didn't qualify _as_ a curse. She took one of the last donut holes and turned it over in her hand. "So, if someone set you up, why are you still exiled?"

Thor grimaced. Of course that hadn't been all of the rest, but now he finished his story. He'd gone back to Asgard after dispatching the construct and closing the breach, and confronted his attacker ('adversary' he kept saying, and Jane felt like that was a substitute word of epic proportions) and revealed their plans, in so far as he knew them, to the leadership. The attacker's response had apparently been to do what Thor had failed at—reignite the war with Jötunheimr by turning Asgard's spacetime bridge, the island nation's only means of travel in and out of the great dome, on Jötunheimr at full force.

Jane tried to grasp it. "But, that kind of power, left to build up—wouldn't it turn Jötunheimr into a gap?"

"If left unchecked, it would have. The only way my friends and I saw to prevent disaster was to break it."

Jane could _feel_ the details he wasn't revealing in the tightly reined emotion in his voice. She couldn't blame him, because it sounded like she'd met him at one of the most difficult times of his life, when everything had been turned upside down, and they barely knew one another. She couldn't expect him to just spill every last tiny detail in one autumn afternoon over donut holes and coffee.

Jane licked her lips. "So when you broke the bridge you wound up exiled again?"

Thor's features eased. "I'm not certain my formal exile is still in effect. The—leadership," another word he'd substituted haphazardly, she thought, "did not have time to discuss the matter with me before we found ourselves struggling to contain the Bifrost. When it exploded I fell into a half-formed gateway, and I awoke to find myself here again." He reached down and tapped the hammer's handle. "I believe my return here was Mjölnir's doing. It returned us to this place, where I had come back into my power and my self."

Jane blew out a breath. She spent a few seconds trying to assemble it all in her mind. "So, someone let the—"

"Jötnar," Thor said.

"Jötnar, into Asgard's Vault, you screwed up taking matters into your own hands and were exiled, the person responsible for letting the Jötnar into Asgard tried to kill you, you were brought back to deal with that, and then in doing _that_ the spacetime bridge your people use to get in and out of Asgard broke, which knocked you back here."

Thor nodded. Jane looked out over the brittle beauty of the courtyard. She'd always wondered what kind of Champion she would pair up with, and now that she had the answer she honestly couldn't say she was surprised.

Some of her thought process had to be visible on her face, because Thor said, "I understand if this is more than you bargained for, and if you would rather not consider..." He stopped, then said, "My people have tests as well, though they are used differently than here."

"Differently how?"

"They are used only to rule out poor matches. It is felt the potential for a proper match can only be assessed in a mock trial."

Jane swallowed. She tried to ignore the lump of ice forming in her stomach. "Does that mean you don't think the test result means anything?"

Looking surprised, Thor said, "No, that—that is not what I intend to say." He ran his hands over his legs. "Only that, even though the Council's test results may have merit, I will still understand if you would rather not consider a mock trial in light of my past."

Relief made her feel almost giddy. " _No_. I mean—" She shook her head and sighed. "Look, I may not have a complex past like you but—you're unpaired. Have you always been?"

He studied her for a handful of seconds, then nodded. She said, "Then you know what it's like. Everyone wondering if you're being too picky, or if you're—defective somehow, or if maybe you're not a _real_ Seer. Or, Champion, I guess, in your case."

He looked out over the courtyard. "Always assuring you that you will find a match somewhere, as if it weren't even acceptable you might not."

"And like it's not possible to be happy or productive without one."

He nodded. Jane shook herself out. "Anyways, I'm not going to say no to the first good test result I've ever had just because your life hasn't been..." Normal was a bad word to use, because it didn't mean anything. She went for, "Calm."

Thor gave her a rueful smile. "It's not an unwise thing, to avoid a Champion who could complicate your life. And there may yet be another who will form a proper bond with you, in time—one who is not...burdened with failings like mine."

"Sure, someone with a pleasant life and just as good a test result could come along, and then two days after we make a scythe it all goes to hell." She sighed. "There's no guarantee in any of this. There never really is." She thought about Don, who'd sworn he was okay with them not forming a link due to their mediocre score, and how that had turned into an unmitigated disaster. There was no certainty in anything, no matter what the tests said—or didn't say.

He was watching her, waiting for her to finish. She said, "I feel like, even with your crazy life and screw ups, maybe we could figure this out. You know, together."

She thought maybe he could tell she had more than a few stories of her own. So they were even: he'd left out plenty of the specifics surrounding his exile ( _exile_ ), and she had several stories about links which couldn't or wouldn't form despite everyone's best efforts. That was okay, and it was also okay if they never divulged the details to one another. It just meant neither of them was perfect and pristine. So it went.

Thor took one of her hands in his. "Together," he said. His hand was so warm Jane wanted to curl up against him on the bench, which seemed like a ridiculous reaction because there was no telling if the bond would be romantic, much less physically intimate, or not. Also, she reminded herself for what felt like the tenth time, they didn't know one another very well. Yet.

She settled for squeezing his hand in response, and brushed a stray piece of hair back from her face. "So, this spacetime bridge that you broke. How did it work?"

He smiled, faintly but sincerely. As their coffee went cold and the sun drew closer to setting and driving them inside, Thor gave Jane her first lesson in Æsir spacetime theory.


End file.
